Music as a catalyst for learning at the Faculty of Education’s Mus-Alpha Lab
Having worked closely with youngsters in daycare and kindergarten from January to April 2011, Jonathan Bolduc has since continued his work as a researcher, this time focusing on interdisciplinarity in school; research underway seeks to study how participating in a musical affected the way 54 Grade 6 students relate to written language and the esthetic experience. The students were responsible for the text, the costumes, the sets, the music and the acting, all under the supervision of their regular teacher and Professor Bolduc.
On April 26, Jonathan Bolduc will discuss some of his projects, as part of the Faculty of Education’s Excellence in Education Lecture Series. Professor Bolduc’s talk, titled Is Music a Catalyst for Learning? A Look at the Benefits of Music Education and Performance (in French, with a bilingual question period), will rely on a large body of literature providing solid reasons for supporting musical education in school. Register here.
Updated: April 2012
Big whacky blue glasses on the tip of his nose, mesmerizing maracas and giant Styrofoam piano keys… Such were some of the colourful props that Professor Jonathan Bolduc used to welcome the kindergarten and junior-kindergarten students from neighbouring Francojeunesse elementary school that filed into his lab at the Faculty of Education every week from January to April 2011.
The group of youngsters reveled in their morning sessions with Monsieur Jonathan, confidently following him up and down the hallways of Lamoureux Hall. But what they could not have known is that their reactions to his special “entertainment” would provide the subject for a fascinatingly original research study conducted by Professor Bolduc in partnership with Pascal Lefebvre, one of his colleagues at the Faculty of Health Sciences.
Jonathan Bolduc is the director of the Mus-Alpha Lab and has been an associate professor of culture and literacy since 2006. In his research, Professor Bolduc examines the links between music education and school-based learning, in particular skills like reading and writing. The Mus-Alpha Lab, the first of its kind in Canada, allows Professor Bolduc to conduct leading-edge research in music education and language acquisition with children aged 4 to 12, a still largely uncharted area of exploration in pedagogical science.
In 2010, Jonathan Bolduc received the Faculty of Education’s New Researcher Award, and he’s now a finalist for the Aurora Prize of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council in recognition of the quality, originality and vibrancy of his research work.
Radio-Canada’s popular-science program, Découverte [external site, video in French only], will feature the Mus-Alpha Lab and the findings of professors Bolduc and Lefebvre in a segment titled Musique et capacité cognitive on Sunday, September 18, at 6:30 p.m. The episode will air again on the French-language Réseau de l’Information (RDI) on Saturday, September 24 at 8 p.m. and Sunday, September 25 at 2 p.m. Their work is also featured in Professionally Speaking [external site], the official magazine of the Ontario College of Teachers, and will be the subject of two more soon-to-be-published articles in Familléduc (October 2011) and Enfants Québec (November 2011).
Text: Anne-Sophie Ducellier
Photos: With the courtesy of Professionally Speaking, The Magazine of the Ontario College of Teachers
Published: September 2011
